Cole on how CM Punk got him hooked on ROH: “When I first became a wrestling fan I was so naive. I thought that the WWE was only thing that existed, until for me I had access to the internet. I’ll never forget on the internet I kept hearing about this guy CM Punk. Everyone kept talking about how CM Punk is the best wrestler in the world, this guys the greatest, this guy needs to be in the WWE. I was like, um whose this CM Punk guy? Obviously the main promotion he was working for was Ring of Honor, so I went and got a Ring of Honor Best of CM Punk DVD. I remember watching it and being do captivated, not by his matches necessarily, don’t get me wrong, he had great matches, his promos, his character. Before that, anytime I’d seen a wrestling angle, I don’t want to say cut and dry as that’s insulting to other angles that I’d seen was good vs evil, boss vs employee. Where as CM Punk created this very deep, emotionally rooted angle with Raven, where it involved alcohol, it involved drugs and this guy who almost looked at Raven as an idol because of his abuse of his alcoholic father looked at Raven as just an evil man. I remember being so captivated by that because I’d never seen an angle go so deep in pro wrestling for me at that time. So, I fell in love with Ring of Honor right after that. I remember when I started training, Ring of Honor was my main goal. That was the main place I wanted to go.”

Cole on working with Matt Hardy: “Fantastic. The opportunity to get to work with a guy like Matt whose been all over the world, I don’t even need to list his credentials. Matt offers such a different perspective of a learning curve for a guy like me. When Matt first came in, I worked with Matt as an opponent and now we work together as a team and it’s been a fantastic learning experience. Matt is solely focused on making Ring of Honor a better company, he loves working for Ring of Honor and we love to have him. Matt offers a completely different perspective for a lot of our guys who’ve not been in the situations that Matt has been in. So, its been awesome and absolutely great for me.”